Following the massive raid on their facilities, the cartel is practically defunct. The Soshi family still possess a fully-licensed warehouse and poppy farms, but have little to no capacity to process or distribute illicit opium.
Things are divided up heavily into a cell-based but vertically-integrated structure.
Poppies are grown in fields owned by the family, harvested, and the raw opium then stored in five small warehouses, four in the Fisherman Quarter and one in the Merchant Quarter.
All of this is legal and properly licensed. There is also a facility in
the North Rim of the Fisherman Quarter where it is openly processed
into medicinal opium in line with the license. Records will indicate
that this is the extent of the very busy operation. One
of these warehouses is completely legitimate. The rest, however, are the
origin for the illegal side of the business. Though they engage in a
token show of supplying the legal processing plant, the majority of raw opium
is diverted to illegal labs.
Processing is done in two dozen
small locations throughout the Fisherman (primarily) and Merchant
Quarters. Each processor consisting of only two to four workers and
whatever security they hire operating under a manager who reports
directly to Watchful.
The
processed opium then moves to one of half a dozen stash houses to await
shipment throughout the country or local sales to wholesalers.
Shipments are primarily overland and seem to be confined to the Unicorn,
Dragon, and Phoenix provinces. Shipments are carefully divided:
if a stash house supplies a portion of the Unicorn provinces, they will
only supply smugglers moving product there.
At every stage of the illegal side of the business a given operation
will only have contact with a limited portion of the rest of the cartel.
A particular warehouse will only supply specific processors who then
have their product stored in a single stash house. Everything is
firewalled into these parallel networks.